


Late Night Calls

by Silex



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Angst, Background Character Death, Background Relationships, Depression, Gen, Siblings, Substance Abuse, Survivor Guilt, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-10-20 15:57:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20678039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/pseuds/Silex
Summary: Late night phone calls are always terrifying. You never know who's calling and what's gone wrong, except when you do. Even if Chris hopes otherwise, for him those calls are always from the same person. Even if the exact conversation changes each time, the way it plays out is always the same.





	Late Night Calls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HostisHumaniGeneris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HostisHumaniGeneris/gifts).

The phone ringing woke him from a sound sleep. Holding his breath, hoping, Chris waited to see if it would ring a second time or if it was a random wrong number. He hated it when the phone rang at night. A glance at the clock confirmed that it was no longer night and that dawn was only a few hours away.

Next to him Jill made a small noise of frustration as the phone continued to ring. She could sleep through the end of the world and had proudly said as much. There were times when he envied what a sound sleeper she was, but then he thought of the dreams that he’d been unable to wake her from.

The ringing stopped and Chris let out a sigh of relief. If it was important they’d leave a message and he’d decide for himself if it was important enough to call them back. Of all the times this had happened there had only been one where the message merited immediate response.

Putting an arm around Jill he pulled her in close to him. She wiggled against him, trying to get comfortable.

The phone started ringing again.

“Dammit, dammit, dammit.”

Muttering under his breath Chris disentangled himself from the sheets and Jill.

This wasn’t the first time this had happened and as the ringing continued his hope that it was just a telemarketer or glitch in the phone system grew increasingly faint.

He didn’t hesitate when he answered.

“Go to sleep Claire.”

He didn’t waste time asking where she was and if she was alright because she would have told him if she was somewhere, like in another time zone where calling him at a time like this would seem remotely reasonable.

She was home.

And she wasn’t okay.

She never was when she called him like this.

“I can’t sleep,” her answer wasn’t unexpected, though how calm she sounded was.

“Drink some tea,” Chris sighed, walking out of the bedroom and into the kitchen to leave Jill in peace, “Or a glass of water at least. It’ll help you.”

“I’m wide awake,” she sounded more distant than just the miles between them, “I’ve been drinking coffee all night.”

Coffee, sure. He knew what she meant by that, had commented on it once when he saw what she was doing and had it thrown back in his face. But maybe he could give her the benefit of the doubt, maybe she’d remembered to put some coffee in her Baileys tonight.

“Then drink some tea to relax,” he persisted, preferring the disagreement they were having to what would follow, “The one you drink that smells like soap, have some of that.”

“The lavender one?” There was a pause. Maybe she was looking for her tea.

Or maybe she was heating up another few spoonsful of water to melt some shitty instant coffee in and then fill the mug the rest of the way up with some of the cloyingly sweet liqueurs she kept around to drink when she wanted to pretend that she didn’t have a problem.

He wasn’t being fair though, she didn’t have a problem, mostly. He was just her older brother and it was his right not to approve of her drinking. Just like it was her right as his little sister to scream at him for the same.

“I’m out of it,” she sounded proud, as though not being able to do what he’d asked was a victory.

Because there were times when it seemed that they’d never gotten past being ten and sixteen and all the resentment and spite that came with it.

If things had gone differently would they have grown up to hate each other normally? Never talking expect at family get-togethers where they put it all aside and at least pretended to get along so they could remember the good times? What would it have been like if there had been good times?

“Have some milk then,” he persisted, not wanting the conversation to move on to the point where the calm would shatter and her reason for calling him would become apparent.

He knew why she’d called.

It was always the same thing.

“And then are you going to tell me a story like you did when I was little and mom and dad weren’t around?” She mocked, the calm starting to show the first cracks, “Once upon a time there was a girl named Claire who didn’t fuck up everything she touched?”

“You don’t fuck up everything,” he sighed, knowing it rang hollow because how many times had she said the same damned thing to him?

“Name one thing I’ve done right.”

That was why he hated these phone calls, because he couldn’t just sit there in silence and wait for her to calm down, like Jill did with him. Though with Jill there were times that the silences stretched on too long and her gaze went from blank to inward so that he had to stop dwelling on whatever had set him off and worry about her. He had to give an answer, he could feel Claire’s impatience in the faint crackling of static over the phone, so quiet that maybe it was just tinnitus. His ears had been bothering him lately. Maybe it was the weather, his blood pressure, having his head bounced off of the pavement one too many times, or just plain old hearing damage from not caring about hearing protection when he was younger.

Claire laughed bitterly, “You can’t think of anything, can you?”

He could, he could think of plenty of things. She’d managed on her own after he moved out, survived Raccoon City, moved on with her life, gotten a job, made something of her life, made a difference in the world and kept going despite the number of times she’d been kicked to the curb by life.

But it was a trick question, any answer he gave she’d counter.

Except, maybe, “Sherry, you saved Sherry.”

“Did I really?” Claire snapped, ready to argue even that.

“Yes,” he sighed and to up to pace the kitchen, opening and closing the cabinets as he searched for something he knew wouldn’t be there. Jill had been through with her last bout of cleaning, though it wasn’t like she didn’t have the time. Staying home between doctor’s appointments on her medically mandated leave meant that she had plenty of time to control as much as she could. It was her way of coping, controlling the minutia of her life, their lives. He supposed he could have resented her for it if he tried, but it would be an argument that he’d lose because he wouldn’t want to win, “If you hadn’t been there for her what would have happened to her?”

It was a question he left open ended because Claire hadn’t told him everything and he hadn’t tried to fill in the blanks. He had ideas, but she had a better imagination than him, her mind was probably buzzing with the sort of worst case scenarios she loved to come up with late at night when they were both better off asleep.

“She’s still shook up about what happened with Simmons.”

Wasn’t that the darndest way of putting things? What did it say about their lives that the assassination the President, a scheme so convoluted that he was still trying to figure out who was trying to kill who and which, if any, side had been in the right, involving global acts of bioterrorism that had nearly killed him twice. Had killed so many good men, better men than him.

Men who should have still been alive.

Would have if he’d been faster, or cleverer, or been the one to take the bullet, or needle, or dove in front of the fangs of a B.O.W..

“At least she’s still alive to be upset,” he said, forcing himself to focus on Claire. Her problems, not his, this was all about her.

And Sherry apparently.

“Unlike Steve.”

Of course.

It always came back to this, because apparently they weren’t still ten and sixteen, they’d moved past that to being eighteen and twenty-four, which wasn’t much better.

It made no sense to him, everything Claire had ever said about the kid had been overwhelmingly negative. He was a braggart, flighty, had no trigger discipline, had nearly killed her or gotten her killed several times, couldn’t take care of himself, and was scrawny and generally stupid.

Except apparently when it was midnight and she’d been up all night drinking coffee or if he said a single negative thing about the kid who he hadn’t met until after he was dead.

For some reason she’d decided that Steve Burnside was the albatross she’d carry around forever, though given what had happened Chris was surprised that he was the one she brought up.

“You’d said she was doing good enough the last time you spoke to her,” he refused to even acknowledge what she was doing. If Claire was going to call him this late, trying to get sympathy or a distraction, that was what she was going to get, not a goddamn argument.

“Or Neil,” she ignored him right back with something he couldn’t.

“Why the hell would you bring him up? He got what he wanted, what he deserved and he’s dead now. End of story.”

Again he didn’t know the exact details, but he knew enough, that Neil had sold Claire and her coworkers out, gotten them infected with some fucked up fear virus, all to try and get his hands on Uroboros because he was nostalgic for the Terragrigia Panic or some shit like that. That Wesker’s mysterious sister had been a part of it, making Wesker merely one of a nebulous number of Weskers, only served to further guarantee that it was something she should know better than to bring up in any context unless she had good reason to.

“I could have stopped him,” Claire said softly, utterly lacking in conviction.

“You did! With a bullet to the fucking head!”

He didn’t know if that was true or not, or if that would have been enough to kill Neil on its own given what he’d gotten infected with, but it worked for the point he was trying to make.

“I could have done it sooner.”

“When?” He finished his fruitless lap of the kitchen, wondering if the cooking wine he was pretty sure he’d seen if the fridge last week would be worth it. It tasted like shit, but he’d never liked wine to begin with so there was no difference there and Christ he needed a drink if this conversation was going to go on much longer.

“At the party when it all happened.”

“Yes, that’s right,” he gripped the back of one of the chairs to keep from throwing it, “Kill him at a party, that’ll work out great for everyone.”

“It would have stopped him,” Claire said meekly, because she knew he was right, “Gabe and all the others would still be alive then.”

“From what you’ve said whatever his plan was, it was already in action by then, killing him at the party wouldn’t have changed anything except made things worse for you,” he tried to be rational, tried to think of the right thing to say.

“Sooner then. I should have seen him for what he really was.”

There was her tendency to throw his own words back at him again, though he didn’t think that she knew what she was doing, that he’d said the same thing about Wesker, but at least with Wesker there’d been signs.

Signs only apparent in hindsight, but signs none the less. S.T.A.R.S. had been sketchy as hell from the start, something he’d deliberately ignored because it had been a dream job after getting out of the Airforce with a less than sterling résumé.

“People like that are good at hiding it. Trust me. And TerraSave was a legitimate organization. It still is,” he corrected himself because despite everything Claire still worked for them. Just like him and the BSAA. They were both a mess that way, forever going back to the wound to confirm that yes, it did still hurt.

“I shouldn’t have trusted him,” Claire remained adamant, “You would have seen Neil for what he was. You did see him for what he was.”

Just because when he’d first seen a picture of the man in a newspaper he’d said that he looked like a sleazy poser and a douche with something to prove.

“Claire,” he sighed, pulling out the chair and sitting down, “You don’t get it.”

“What don’t I get?” she snarled, but didn’t hang up on him, proving she wasn’t as mad as she sounded, “Please, be the smart older brother that you like to think you are and tell me that I’m so wrong about everything.”

“Exactly,” he glanced at the fridge across from him. He was sure that cooking wine was in here and how bad could it be? Probably better than being up at this hour sober, “I’m you older brother, you were gushing with praise over a guy I’d never met. It’s my job to talk shit about him. I’d have said the same thing to his face if he was some guy you brought over for dinner or something.”

As though that would ever happen. Distance and work meant that he’d never met any of her boyfriends.

“Really?” She sounded calm, not the forced calm of earlier, but the too tired to be upset calm that usually followed her outbursts. There was still a chance of her finding her second wind though.

“Really,” he closed his eyes, trying to think of Jill waiting for him in the bed, how even if she could sleep through the end of the world she’d wake up in an instant if she smelled alcohol on his breath. How she never said anything, but she’d look at him.

Look through him and be gone while standing there.

He worried that there might come a time when she didn’t come back.

He’d done that to her and she hadn’t said anything, waited in quarantine while he disappeared in Edonia. They never talked about it, so his suspicions that she’d somehow needled Piers into finding him were entirely groundless. He didn’t even know if the two of them had ever met.

He didn’t want to know.

He had enough reasons not to trust himself and enough things to blame himself for, he didn’t need to start doing the same for Jill.

“What about…” she trailed off, cleared her throat, “What about Moira?”

He’d been waiting for that, had honestly hoped that she’d replace Steve as the person Claire tortured herself over because Barry didn’t blame her and he could always bring up that.

Maybe that was why Steve couldn’t be replaced, because he represented a failure that Claire had no hope of being forgiven for. There was no one left alive to forgive her.

It wasn’t as though he didn’t do the same thing with…everyone actually.

Even Jill and she was still alive.

He still should have been the one to go out that window, because no matter the outcome he was sure she wouldn’t have fucked things up as badly as him. She was calm, levelheaded, even when she had no business being that way. If she’d been the one in Edonia Lanshiang wouldn’t have happened.

Taking a deep breath he tried to gather his thoughts, plan out what he was going to say.

“Moira’s dead. She’s dead and there’s nothing you can do to bring her back. You know who else is dead? Brad, Finn, Marco, Carl, Andy, Jeff, Keaton, Reid, Marco and Piers,” he started the litany he’d gone over countless times to himself when he couldn’t sleep, names and faces of everyone who he’d ever failed, Jill was there too sometimes, even though she shouldn’t have been, “They’re all dead and we can’t bring them back. No matter how many times you think it should have been you, it wasn’t. We’re alive and they’re not and we have to deal with that.”

So much for planning, but at least he’d managed to pull it back together at the end.

Claire sighed and put the phone down.

He could hear her moving, throwing something out. Maybe an empty bottle that hadn’t been that way at the start of the night.

Or maybe pouring what was left of a half full bottle down the sink.

He’d done both enough to know that each was equally plausible and meaningless.

There would always be more bottles.

And more dead.

Claire picked the phone back up.

“I…” she trailed off.

He waited, patiently and when the seconds of silence ticked by into minutes without anything other than static and the ringing of his ears filling it, he spoke.

“Now call Sherry. At least you can and she’s always happy to hear from you,” it was a guess on his part, but the way Claire talked about her it was a safe one. She’d been thrilled that the two of them met and kept talking about how she wanted to arrange a proper introduction. So he figured it was a safe bet that Sherry wouldn’t mind a call at this hour. For all he knew she didn’t sleep.

For all he knew she climbed the walls and ate raw meat because his first meeting with her had left him with a less than kind impression. You judged people by the company they kept and all that.

He knew he wasn’t being fair, maybe the miserable bastard genuinely wasn’t the little shit he came across as and he shouldn’t think of less of Sherry for working with him. Or worse.

Claire had let slip things in past conversations that implied worse.

Fortunately none of his contempt made it across the phone line.

“You’re right,” Claire said at last, “I don’t talk to her often enough. Or visit. We should plan something. If you and Jill are around you can come too. Maybe I’ll get Leon in on it and we can have a barbeque or something. There was that one park that one year, right? I’ll call Sherry.”

She hung up.

Chris held onto the silent phone for a long while afterwards, trying to read meaning into the emptiness. Maybe Claire would call Sherry. Maybe she’d just go to bed and forget about it in the morning and not think about it until their next conversation.

Maybe he’d call her up in a few hours, to check on her.

Maybe something else would get in the way for him or her and the call wouldn’t happen.

It was late, or early, but there were still a few more hours before it was light out and he knew if he spent that time in the kitchen he’d do something he’d regret.

When he got back Jill had stolen his pillow and was clinging to it with a fierce determination. Attempting to get it back from her proved futile, his attempts earning him an annoyed mutter, “You were out drinking.”

He gave a tired laugh, “No I haven’t. You’re just dreaming.”

It might have helped though. There were times like this, the late nights that bled into mornings where he wondered why he stopped. Then he looked at Jill, still asleep, her brow furrowed in a worried grimace, hands clenching and unclenching in the blankets as she fought some unknown foe, one he couldn’t save her from. Just like always.

He was the one who had to be strong. For his sister.

For Jill.

For everyone.

“Let me have some blankets,” he tried to pull them away from Jill.

Exhaling sharply she rolled away from him, nearly off the bed.

At least there was space for him to lay down, even if she’d wrapped the blankets so tightly around herself that he had no hope of wresting them away.

Wide awake he stared at the ceiling, waiting for the darkness of the room to diminish and the first rays of light to work their way in between the slats of the blinds.

Eventually Jill rolled back to him, pressing herself tightly against him.

Chris put his arm around her, listened as she sighed and fell into a deeper sleep. Maybe, just maybe if he was lucky, he might get some sleep tonight after all.

Because tomorrow was another day and there was no telling what it might bring.

He could hope for the best, but there was no way to know.

**Author's Note:**

> It's a bit darker than my usual interpretation of things, but it was certainly fun to write.


End file.
